


MIRAGE

by orphan_account



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Amnesia, Bucky Barnes Recovering, Bucky Barnes Remembers, Camus would get a kick out of the dehumanized and emotionless Bucky Barnes, Delirium, Emotional Hurt, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Espionage, Heavy Angst, Hope vs. Despair, Mind Control, Mind Control Aftermath & Recovery, Nightmares, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Pre-Captain America: Civil War (Movie)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-18
Updated: 2017-03-18
Packaged: 2018-10-07 05:52:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,726
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10353600
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: After seventy years of Hydra-induced memory loss and mind control, the Soldier starts remembering. The bad, the worst and a red shimmer of hope.





	

 

_He doesn't remember emotion._

 

The images come to his mind blurred at first, with nothing clear but the crimson colour of blood, something he recognizes less by its obvious appearance in the hazy outlines of a memory and more by the terrifyingly reliable gallery of already recovered memories of his gushing-with-blood ledger.

 

The mechanic movements of both his flesh and artificial arms and the identical economic, efficient motions of his body are all too familiar. His grip on his firearms is always firm but relaxed, experienced, _sure_. His face is covered, identity secure even from himself. His conscience quiet.

 

He remembers 1974. A family of a scientist. An enemy. A target.

 

He was never told, because he didn’t need to know, that the scientist was a genius in his field, that his crime against the Motherland was refusal to participate in the creation of weapons of mass destruction, that his wife and seven-year-old son are guilty of no more than being _his_ wife and son.

 

He entered their home on a late October night, quiet and swift, once again justifying the title of a _prizrak._ A ghost.

 

It didn’t take a minute to find the woman, her back turned to him, her attention wholly devoted to the floor she was mopping. Even if it wasn’t so, she would hardly have noticed him. In the second it took him to appear in the doorframe and cross the small kitchen to her spot, the woman had barely had time to turn around, only to find herself at gunpoint.

 

The ease he felt was no more than lack of anything but instinct. His pistol against Tatiana Sergeieva’s head was steady, his hand didn’t linger, his thoughts didn’t waver. He pulled the trigger before the woman could muster so much as the plea for life that had barely started to form in her mind, before her eyes could grow in fear. The shock had barely registered before it was cut short in a quick, almost silent moment when only a muffled blast was heard.

 

Tatiana’s assassin gripped her body with his metal arm and the mop with the other, laying them on the floor to avoid the thud and clank they would otherwise make, if only to make sure his remaining target was undisturbed. There was no way he could possibly fail his mission, but he always opted for the fast, least maintenance ways to execute his tasks unless ordered otherwise. And such request from his superiors would only come once, when a statement had to be made. For now, nothing but the results mattered. Methods were, it seemed, a free choice.

 

He climbed the stairs with the step a man of his build and size could have acquired only by extensive, dedicated years of training. And his were long, excruciating and resulted in an inerrable and for many unattainable skill of stealth. Only one would ever come close, polished himself personally to near perfection, and almost denied the attribute of flawlessness only because _he_ could always see her coming.

He didn’t need to look for Alexei Sergeiev’s room because he’d learned the house imprints to every last detail. The boy was asleep in his bedroom right past the staircase on the second floor, with door opened and in the intruder’s line of sight. The man all but skidded across the room and stopped by the side of Alexei’s bed, blocking the feeble ray of moonlight the unshaded window let through. As with his mother, the man laid the pistol against the boy’s head, once again the silencer suppressing the sound. There was not even a slightest shift in the child’s position. The only change was the bullet hole in his head and the stream of blood seeping from it, one which would stop soon.

 

The man, having carried through the task set before him, placed his pistol back in its holder and left the house the same way he entered. He passed by Tatiana’s corpse – the pool of blood around her hadn't yet stopped spreading.

 

His eyes found the black transport van fifty meters down the street in the dark shade of an oak tree and he reached it unnoticed by no more than a single stray cat that bolted behind the bushes of the house he’d just left.

 

In the vehicle, as the driver started the engine, he sent his short report in somewhat flawed Russian via radio. _“Target eliminated. Mission accomplished.”_

Come tomorrow morning, dr. Yevgeny Sergeiev would learn the same.

 

And his family’s mercenary – he was cold, determined and flawlessly efficient. And without fail loyal soldier. _The_ Soldier, _Zimniy Soldat,_ was a perfected operative with Arnim Zola’s signature and Hydra’s label. That was something James Barnes didn’t need to remember because they never let him forget.

 

 

 

On each night like this, when nightmares find him – and there have been a few too many already – James’ terrors grow in size and intensity until all he can see is red, blinding and burning like an inferno. The swirl of emotion he should have felt years ago traps him, and then tosses and turns and spits him out in the desert his life resembles.

 

He doesn’t remember emotion. He never once truly _felt_ anything when his fingers pulled the trigger, drew the knife or threw the grenade. It was no more than a bland motion picture of his mechanical, cold doings. He’s been called a beast, but the difference between him and beast was discipline. He was a machine. An asset. An instrument of Hydra’s terrorism.

 

The fears and the pain caught up to him in the small, rundown motels he hid in at first. The first such night of dented walls and sweat-soaked sheets happened a week after he’d saved the man who was his friend and brother in arms before he became an unwilling enemy.

 

Steve Rogers didn’t want to be his enemy. James knew that now, but he didn’t _understand._ He couldn’t fathom why, after seventy years of oblivion and sterilized cages and ice, his first flicker of doubt found him on a S.H.I.E.L.D. helicarrier. Why his hands betrayed him for the first time and his mind allowed itself second guessing the mission, the only goal he had before him.

 

James spent that first night trapped in a delirious mosaic of dreams of his former ally, and the waves of anxiety, fear and guilt crashed against him, drowning him deep in the darkness of emotions that came to him like a toxic shock.

 

He wasn’t terrified of penance or death. His body trembled and breath escaped with every _feeling_ that came back to him, with each fraction of humanity that pressed heavily on his chest. The agony of everything _humane_ he was deprived of surging back and threatening to push him over the edge he’s been dangling on left James, for a moment, wishing he didn’t know how to feel again.

 

He was afraid of remembering all of them, of knowing every face and eyes he shut forever because the guilt would be too much. But the fear of being forced to do it again gnawed at him just as hard, biting, breaking, rooting itself deep within his mind and soul, waiting to be realized as his conscience left raw, open wounds all over him.

 

On that first night, he for the first time experienced the full extent of the agony his former self would have felt. And on that first morning after, he didn’t remember much of the exact memories, but the tormenting weight of humanity continued to rage inside him like a hot storm.

 

And it never weakened.

 

Each following night, everything was nearly the same. He remembered. He felt. And every freshly awakened memory was followed by the same desert, the some burning sensation of emotions, leaving him wandering, crawling and falling through the sand, always left with open wounds that hurt so much he would lose consciousness if able to. The conscience didn’t let him.

 

 

On the morning following the third night, he visited the Smithsonian, desperately looking for relief. The man with his face and name, James “Bucky” Barnes, was someone else entirely. James couldn’t imagine that man, the smiling young soldier by Captain America’s side, ever, not on his life, hurting Steve Rogers.

 

Yet standing there seventy years later, he’s tried to kill him twice. Young Bucky didn’t have the edge to his eyes that would later darken his bright blue eyes. His build was slightly slimmer, lighter. He didn’t have the stubborn crease between his eyes, a mark of decades of fighting and killing. His body was complete.

 

His older self tensed, his left obscured arm heavy, his mind for the first time feeling it was alien.

 

The rigid stance he was in for a few minutes, staring at the exhibit, a memento of heroism and youth, kept him absolutely still as only his chest slightly moved as he breathed, though it couldn’t be seen under the three layers of clothes he had on.

 

He realized his mistake when _she,_ as never before, managed to sneak up on him. “I never thought I’d catch you off guard.”

 

James didn’t respond in kind. Instead, he shifted slightly, his eyes scanning the area in his line of sight for any possible company other than the Black Widow. He was wary of turning around, however, because a 360° would definitely reveal him if he wasn’t already.

 

He didn’t notice anyone in his peripheral vision. “Are you here to bring me in?”

 

“No.” The short and almost sharp answer was closer now. She was now beside him rather than behind. Her eyes glanced at Bucky’s image, darting across the young face with a hint of a smile, his hat slightly tilted in boyish mischief. James had a feeling – though he wasn’t entirely sure about the reliability of his hunches anymore – that Natalia Romanova didn’t just stare at the exhibit for the sake of discretion. Her face, he thought, wasn’t professionally expressionless as he would have assumed. There was the slightest hint of nostalgia in the elegant lines of her face that even the years of training and espionage didn’t harden.

 

“Steve’s looking for you,” she elaborated, softer than before. James suspected the gentler tone of her voice was dedicated to his old friend, the tragedy of the past seven decades and his unwavering loyalty to the man he once knew.

 

He was silent for a few moments. The weight of memory and loss and recovered sense of feeling pressed a little harder on his chest and James closed his eyes to stop himself from hyperventilating. But closing his eyes made it even worse – there was no present to prevail, and the broken images of the past started to gain on intensity, blocking out the noise of the museum. His face started to twist in agony and his fists inside his pockets clenched so hard he stopped the blood flow to his right hand fingers.

 

 _“James?”_ The word escaped her lips like she’s never said it before, but the soft tone laced with worry sounded familiar. Unknown, yet so intimately known. It was like a balm to his ears, a calming, low melody.

 

He opened his eyes and tried to relax his face, slowly easing his fisted hands. “Will you tell him where I am?” It was a question and a request to stay hidden, but James was used to not being given a choice. Nothing came naturally in explicitly asking for his wishes to be respected.

 

Natalia, who no longer looked or sounded worried, but still hadn’t let go of caution, gave him the answer he doesn’t have a memory of hearing ever before. “Only if you want me to.”

 

He shook his head. No, he doesn’t. “I’m leaving the city tonight, anyway. Thank you.” When he turned to finally look at her, Natalia once again struck him as a memory buried deep within, out of reach but not entirely out of sight. There was a glimpse of ease he felt he’d never allowed himself with anyone, and that scared him.

 

Another curt nod and he left her standing in front of the exhibit, disappearing from her view quickly and easily in a familiar fashion. As promised, that same night he packed his meagre belongings. Three days later he was in Bucharest to stay.

 

His first night after visiting the Smithsonian wasn’t easier. It was no less excruciating than before – but this time he remembered feeling even then, when he wasn’t supposed to. In the Red Room, whenever he shared time and space with the Academy’s most precious student and his best pupil. The excitement and content, love and fear all at once. The guilt for moulding her into a perfect assassin, the sorrow for witnessing whatever innocence she had at sixteen years of age being taken away. It consumed James again, the now known and anticipated swirl of emotions mixed with the bittersweet memories of what once resembled happiness, the red of the blood blending with the crimson shine of her hair to the point where he couldn’t tell one from the other.

 

He was left in the desert again, alone, wounded, desperate, burning. The blaring hot sun added another shade of red to his vision and it was all he could see. _Red._

A low murmur of a melody hid just below the storming pain and James was washed over with another wave of agonizing realization that he’d once loved the woman he’d helped make apart to resemble him. He may have failed. It could be one mission he’d failed because she’s no longer like him, no longer an instrument of wrong masters’ will.

 

James came to wonder if this is what redemption feels like. If his was the last push that brought Natalia into the abyss. If there is a bottom to reach and walls to climb and daylight to witness.

 

But he doesn’t think he reach it. Not when every time he falls in over and over again, each time heavier and less willing to fight.

 

**_MIRAGE_ **

_After seventy years of Hydra-induced memory loss and mind control, the Soldier starts remembering. The bad, the worst and a red shimmer of hope._

He doesn't remember emotion.

 

The images come to his mind blurred at first, with nothing clear but the crimson colour of blood, something he recognizes less by its obvious appearance in the hazy outlines of a memory and more by the terrifyingly reliable gallery of already recovered memories of his gushing-with-blood ledger.

 

The mechanic movements of both his flesh and artificial arms and the identical economic, efficient motions of his body are all too familiar. His grip on his firearms is always firm but relaxed, experienced, _sure_. His face is covered, identity secure even from himself. His conscience quiet.

 

He remembers 1974. A family of a scientist. An enemy. A target.

 

He was never told, because he didn’t need to know, that the scientist was a genius in his field, that his crime against the Motherland was refusal to participate in the creation of weapons of mass destruction, that his wife and seven-year-old son are guilty of no more than being _his_ wife and son.

 

He entered their home on a late October night, quiet and swift, once again justifying the title of a _prizrak._ A ghost.

 

It didn’t take a minute to find the woman, her back turned to him, her attention wholly devoted to the floor she was mopping. Even if it wasn’t so, she would hardly have noticed him. In the second it took him to appear in the doorframe and cross the small kitchen to her spot, the woman had barely had time to turn around, only to find herself at gunpoint.

 

The ease he felt was no more than lack of anything but instinct. His pistol against Tatiana Sergeieva’s head was steady, his hand didn’t linger, his thoughts didn’t waver. He pulled the trigger before the woman could muster so much as the plea for life that had barely started to form in her mind, before her eyes could grow in fear. The shock had barely registered before it was cut short in a quick, almost silent moment when only a muffled blast was heard.

 

Tatiana’s assassin gripped her body with his metal arm and the mop with the other, laying them on the floor to avoid the thud and clank they would otherwise make, if only to make sure his remaining target was undisturbed. There was no way he could possibly fail his mission, but he always opted for the fast, least maintenance ways to execute his tasks unless ordered otherwise. And such request from his superiors would only come once, when a statement had to be made. For now, nothing but the results mattered. Methods were, it seemed, a free choice.

 

He climbed the stairs with the step a man of his build and size could have acquired only by extensive, dedicated years of training. And his were long, excruciating and resulted in an inerrable and for many unattainable skill of stealth. Only one would ever come close, polished himself personally to near perfection, and almost denied the attribute of flawlessness only because _he_ could always see her coming.

He didn’t need to look for Alexei Sergeiev’s room because he’d learned the house imprints to every last detail. The boy was asleep in his bedroom right past the staircase on the second floor, with door opened and in the intruder’s line of sight. The man all but skidded across the room and stopped by the side of Alexei’s bed, blocking the feeble ray of moonlight the unshaded window let through. As with his mother, the man laid the pistol against the boy’s head, once again the silencer suppressing the sound. There was not even a slightest shift in the child’s position. The only change was the bullet hole in his head and the stream of blood seeping from it, one which would stop soon.

 

The man, having carried through the task set before him, placed his pistol back in its holder and left the house the same way he entered. He passed by Tatiana’s corpse – the pool of blood around her hadn't yet stopped spreading.

 

His eyes found the black transport van fifty meters down the street in the dark shade of an oak tree and he reached it unnoticed by no more than a single stray cat that bolted behind the bushes of the house he’d just left.

 

In the vehicle, as the driver started the engine, he sent his short report in somewhat flawed Russian via radio. _“Target eliminated. Mission accomplished.”_

Come tomorrow morning, dr. Yevgeny Sergeiev would learn the same.

 

And his family’s mercenary – he was cold, determined and flawlessly efficient. And without fail loyal soldier. _The_ Soldier, _Zimniy Soldat,_ was a perfected operative with Arnim Zola’s signature and Hydra’s label. That was something James Barnes didn’t need to remember because they never let him forget.

 

 

 

On each night like this, when nightmares find him – and there have been a few too many already – James’ terrors grow in size and intensity until all he can see is red, blinding and burning like an inferno. The swirl of emotion he should have felt years ago traps him, and then tosses and turns and spits him out in the desert his life resembles.

 

He doesn’t remember emotion. He never once truly _felt_ anything when his fingers pulled the trigger, drew the knife or threw the grenade. It was no more than a bland motion picture of his mechanical, cold doings. He’s been called a beast, but the difference between him and beast was discipline. He was a machine. An asset. An instrument of Hydra’s terrorism.

 

The fears and the pain caught up to him in the small, rundown motels he hid in at first. The first such night of dented walls and sweat-soaked sheets happened a week after he’d saved the man who was his friend and brother in arms before he became an unwilling enemy.

 

Steve Rogers didn’t want to be his enemy. James knew that now, but he didn’t _understand._ He couldn’t fathom why, after seventy years of oblivion and sterilized cages and ice, his first flicker of doubt found him on a S.H.I.E.L.D. helicarrier. Why his hands betrayed him for the first time and his mind allowed itself second guessing the mission, the only goal he had before him.

 

James spent that first night trapped in a delirious mosaic of dreams of his former ally, and the waves of anxiety, fear and guilt crashed against him, drowning him deep in the darkness of emotions that came to him like a toxic shock.

 

He wasn’t terrified of penance or death. His body trembled and breath escaped with every _feeling_ that came back to him, with each fraction of humanity that pressed heavily on his chest. The agony of everything _humane_ he was deprived of surging back and threatening to push him over the edge he’s been dangling on left James, for a moment, wishing he didn’t know how to feel again.

 

He was afraid of remembering all of them, of knowing every face and eyes he shut forever because the guilt would be too much. But the fear of being forced to do it again gnawed at him just as hard, biting, breaking, rooting itself deep within his mind and soul, waiting to be realized as his conscience left raw, open wounds all over him.

 

On that first night, he for the first time experienced the full extent of the agony his former self would have felt. And on that first morning after, he didn’t remember much of the exact memories, but the tormenting weight of humanity continued to rage inside him like a hot storm.

 

And it never weakened.

 

Each following night, everything was nearly the same. He remembered. He felt. And every freshly awakened memory was followed by the same desert, the some burning sensation of emotions, leaving him wandering, crawling and falling through the sand, always left with open wounds that hurt so much he would lose consciousness if able to. The conscience didn’t let him.

 

 

On the morning following the third night, he visited the Smithsonian, desperately looking for relief. The man with his face and name, James “Bucky” Barnes, was someone else entirely. James couldn’t imagine that man, the smiling young soldier by Captain America’s side, ever, not on his life, hurting Steve Rogers.

 

Yet standing there seventy years later, he’s tried to kill him twice. Young Bucky didn’t have the edge to his eyes that would later darken his bright blue eyes. His build was slightly slimmer, lighter. He didn’t have the stubborn crease between his eyes, a mark of decades of fighting and killing. His body was complete.

 

His older self tensed, his left obscured arm heavy, his mind for the first time feeling it was alien.

 

The rigid stance he was in for a few minutes, staring at the exhibit, a memento of heroism and youth, kept him absolutely still as only his chest slightly moved as he breathed, though it couldn’t be seen under the three layers of clothes he had on.

 

He realized his mistake when _she,_ as never before, managed to sneak up on him. “I never thought I’d catch you off guard.”

 

James didn’t respond in kind. Instead, he shifted slightly, his eyes scanning the area in his line of sight for any possible company other than the Black Widow. He was wary of turning around, however, because a 360° would definitely reveal him if he wasn’t already.

 

He didn’t notice anyone in his peripheral vision. “Are you here to bring me in?”

 

“No.” The short and almost sharp answer was closer now. She was now beside him rather than behind. Her eyes glanced at Bucky’s image, darting across the young face with a hint of a smile, his hat slightly tilted in boyish mischief. James had a feeling – though he wasn’t entirely sure about the reliability of his hunches anymore – that Natalia Romanova didn’t just stare at the exhibit for the sake of discretion. Her face, he thought, wasn’t professionally expressionless as he would have assumed. There was the slightest hint of nostalgia in the elegant lines of her face that even the years of training and espionage didn’t harden.

 

“Steve’s looking for you,” she elaborated, softer than before. James suspected the gentler tone of her voice was dedicated to his old friend, the tragedy of the past seven decades and his unwavering loyalty to the man he once knew.

 

He was silent for a few moments. The weight of memory and loss and recovered sense of feeling pressed a little harder on his chest and James closed his eyes to stop himself from hyperventilating. But closing his eyes made it even worse – there was no present to prevail, and the broken images of the past started to gain on intensity, blocking out the noise of the museum. His face started to twist in agony and his fists inside his pockets clenched so hard he stopped the blood flow to his right hand fingers.

 

 _“James?”_ The word escaped her lips like she’s never said it before, but the soft tone laced with worry sounded familiar. Unknown, yet so intimately known. It was like a balm to his ears, a calming, low melody.

 

He opened his eyes and tried to relax his face, slowly easing his fisted hands. “Will you tell him where I am?” It was a question and a request to stay hidden, but James was used to not being given a choice. Nothing came naturally in explicitly asking for his wishes to be respected.

 

Natalia, who no longer looked or sounded worried, but still hadn’t let go of caution, gave him the answer he doesn’t have a memory of hearing ever before. “Only if you want me to.”

 

He shook his head. No, he doesn’t. “I’m leaving the city tonight, anyway. Thank you.” When he turned to finally look at her, Natalia once again struck him as a memory buried deep within, out of reach but not entirely out of sight. There was a glimpse of ease he felt he’d never allowed himself with anyone, and that scared him.

 

Another curt nod and he left her standing in front of the exhibit, disappearing from her view quickly and easily in a familiar fashion. As promised, that same night he packed his meagre belongings. Three days later he was in Bucharest to stay.

 

His first night after visiting the Smithsonian wasn’t easier. It was no less excruciating than before – but this time he remembered feeling even then, when he wasn’t supposed to. In the Red Room, whenever he shared time and space with the Academy’s most precious student and his best pupil. The excitement and content, love and fear all at once. The guilt for moulding her into a perfect assassin, the sorrow for witnessing whatever innocence she had at sixteen years of age being taken away. It consumed James again, the now known and anticipated swirl of emotions mixed with the bittersweet memories of what once resembled happiness, the red of the blood blending with the crimson shine of her hair to the point where he couldn’t tell one from the other.

 

He was left in the desert again, alone, wounded, desperate, burning. The blaring hot sun added another shade of red to his vision and it was all he could see. _Red._

A low murmur of a melody hid just below the storming pain and James was washed over with another wave of agonizing realization that he’d once loved the woman he’d helped make apart to resemble him. He may have failed. It could be one mission he’d failed because she’s no longer like him, no longer an instrument of wrong masters’ will.

 

James came to wonder if this is what redemption feels like. If his was the last push that brought Natalia into the abyss. If there is a bottom to reach and walls to climb and daylight to witness.

 

But he doesn’t think he will reach ever it. Not when every time he falls from the same edge, over and over again, each time heavier and less willing to fight.

**Author's Note:**

> The Sergeievs are a product of my deprived imagination and don't appear in any of the comics or the movies (as far as I know, that is.) 
> 
> I sincerely hope you enjoyed this. Sort of.


End file.
